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Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Otis Pike dies

Otis G. Pike, a longtime
congressman from New York who spearheaded an inquiry in the 1970s into accusations
that the intelligence establishment had abused its power, died on Monday in
Vero Beach, Fla. He was 92.

His daughter, Lois Pike Eyre, said
he had entered a hospice a week ago.

Over 18 years in the House of
Representatives as a Democrat from a heavily Republican district on Long
Island, Mr. Pike styled himself an uninhibited, independent thinker, lashing
out, for example, against military profligacy.

In 1975, he became chairman of the
House Select Committee on Intelligence, which began examining suspicions that
the Central Intelligence Agencyhad had its hand
in coups in Chile and other countries and was spying on American citizens. The
inquiry paralleled one in the Senate; they were the first in which Congress
looked into allegations of abuse by the C.I.A.

Mr. Pike maintained that the
security agencies were inept bureaucracies that left the country vulnerable. “If
an attack were to be launched on America in the very near future,” he said in
late 1975, “it is my belief that America would not know that the attack was
about to be launched.”

The Pike committee hearings were
tempestuous and resulted in a lengthy report demanding greater congressional
oversight of intelligence operations. However, the full House voted to keep the
so-called Pike Report secret. It is probably best remembered for being
disclosed by Daniel Schorr of CBS News and then published in The Village Voice.

Greater attention was paid to the
findings of the Senate committee, which was led by Frank Church, a Democrat of
Idaho. Some of its recommended reforms were carried out.

Otis Grey Pike was born on Aug. 31,
1921, in Riverhead, N.Y., on the eastern edge of Long Island. His parents died
when he was still a small boy, and he was raised by relatives. He enrolled at
Princeton University, then interrupted his studies to join the Marines. During
World War II he was a fighter pilot in the Pacific, flying 120 missions. He
completed his degree after his discharge.

Politics captured his imagination
when he was 14, he said, after he had learned from his sister about a family
who owned a large farm but had nothing for Sunday dinner but boiled potatoes.
After graduating from Columbia University Law School in 1948, he practiced law
in his hometown and became a justice of the peace.

His first campaign for a House
seat, in 1958, failed, but he was elected two years later, despite being a
Democrat in a Republican district. He once quipped, “I’ve always said I’m
surrounded on three sides by water and on the fourth by Republicans.”

A tall, wavy-haired man who wore
bow ties exclusively, he attracted attention in 1967 when he complained that
the Defense Department was paying absurd amounts of money for spare parts like
nuts and washers obtainable at a small fraction of the cost through mail-order
catalogs. Displaying one part at a news conference, he said, “This is called
precision shafting.” The Pentagon ultimately revamped its buying protocol.

In 1969, Mr. Pike conducted a House
subcommittee investigation into the seizure of the intelligence ship Pueblo by
North Koreans, concluding that “serious deficiencies” existed in the United
States military command structure.

In all, Mr. Pike served for nine
terms before choosing not to run for re-election in 1978. He quoted the soccer
player Pelé: “A man can’t play one game all his life.”

After leaving Congress, he wrote a
column for the Newhouse Newspapers for 20 years.

Mr. Pike’s first wife, Doris Orth,
died in 1996, and a son, Robert, died in 2010. In addition to his daughter, he
is survived by his second wife, Barbe Bonjour Pike; a son, Douglas; and two
grandchildren.

One of his memorable achievements
was when he thwarted a bill with a single comical speech on the House floor.
The bill would have awarded $14 million in flight pay to admirals and generals
who spent their time not in cockpits but sitting at desks.

Standing up on the House floor to
criticize the legislation, Mr. Pike spoke with his arms spread and swaying like
the wings of a plane, as if he were flying. He brought up the worrisome perils
of an admiral spinning in his chair and soaring out a window of the Pentagon
into air-traffic patterns. The speech drew laughter and applause. The bill was
defeated.